Water dripping from his face and hair, he whirled at her voice. “What?”
“Firing Oscar.”
“He stole from Mr. Baker and no telling how many others.”
“I know, but that won’t keep you alive when word gets out that a Yankee fired a local, especially if you were serious about putting Abram in his place.” She shuddered to think what stories Oscar would spread in Honey Ridge.
“Would you object to Abram working here? As a gainful employee in Pitts’s position?”
Josie understood his meaning. Did she mind if the mill paid good money to a former slave when there were plenty of white men in Honey Ridge who could use the work? Folks wouldn’t like it. “No. I wouldn’t object. Abram’s a hard worker.”
In fact, she admired Thad’s stand. Not that she’d tell him as much. She worried, too.
“Where is Abram anyway?” She looked back toward the darkened building and the bolted doors. “Already gone to the house?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Thad ran his fingers through his hair. He had nice hair, sandy brown and tipped in sun gold. “I think maybe he’s sweet on Lizzy.”
“On our Lizzy?” She widened her eyes. “Well, I declare.”
“He said something about helping her repair a table leg, but I think she’s the reason he’s not moved on in search of his family.”
“Did he say anything to you? About being sweet on her, I mean.”
“No, but he wasn’t happy that Oscar had...upset her.”
“Oscar?” Josie blinked, suddenly chilled. “What did he do?”
Thad told her about the incident.
“I’ve never liked that man. He—” Her cheeks heated. Should she be telling him this?
“What?” Thad’s blue eyes flamed. “Has he bothered you? Touched you?”
“No, no, not like that, but he...stares and stands too close.” The heat under her collar nearly roasted her. “He makes me uncomfortable, and I do not like to be alone with him.”
“You won’t have to be. We’ve seen the last of Oscar Pitts.”
Josie hoped he was right. Oscar was not the kind of man to take insult lightly. And Thad had insulted him deeply.
She stuck her arms down into the cool creek and closed her eyes. “Oh, that feels wonderful. I am near to baking.”
Sleeves rolled back, Thad did the same, splashing water onto his face and neck. She slid a glance toward him and her breath froze. Long, puckered scars ran from the backs of his hands up to his elbows.
“Thaddeus,” she whispered and, before propriety stopped her, reached to touch the scars.
He jerked away and gripped his sleeve in an effort to cover the damaged skin. Josie put a hand on his, stopping him.
“What happened?” Her heart beat a strange, thick rhythm in her chest.
Thad glanced down at his arms, face grim. “A fire.”
Burns. But from what? “The war?”
He shook his head and swallowed, his throat working. “No.”
Seeing his discomfort, a polite, well-bred woman like Charlotte or Patience would have let the topic end.
“How, Thaddeus? Tell me.” She held his blue eyes with her green ones and saw the hurt and horror that lingered there.
He pushed down his sleeves and sighed as though he knew she was not the kind of woman to take silence for an answer. “A house fire.”
“Yours?”
“Yes.” His face worked and he rubbed a hand over his eyes.
“Something terrible happened, didn’t it? Someone else was involved.”
“My wife and daughter.” He turned his back. A turtle slid into the creek.
She knew the rest before he told her. No man could look so utterly lost without having suffered beyond endurance.
“I couldn’t save them.” The words came out flat and emotionless as if he’d grieved so long and hard, he could not bear to go there again.
She moved in front of him, tender inside in a way that wasn’t comfortable for Josie. She didn’t like to feel tenderness. Tender blooms got crushed.
“You tried, Thad. You did everything you could.” She knew that about him. As with the unpleasant situation concerning Oscar, Thad was not the kind of man who stepped away from the hard things.
He made a harsh sound. “They died, Josie. Trying didn’t matter.”
She had no words of consolation, so she took his arm, first one and then the other, and rolled up his sleeves again until the scars stretched between them. She wanted to skim her fingertips over the puckered evidence of his devotion, but her bravery in shunning propriety only went so far. Touching his skin would mean feeling something she couldn’t allow.
“When Will said you’d been through a lot, I didn’t understand...”
Guilt gripped Josie as if her aversion to anyone from the Northern states had caused his heartbreak. She’d been adamant about him not coming to Honey Ridge, about making him miserable enough to leave. Now that she knew him and knew of his losses, she felt so very, very small.
Tenderness, that unwanted emotion, crept ever upward, winding, vining, threatening to choke her.
“I asked Will to say nothing,” he murmured.
Of course. Pride. Say nothing. Soldier on. Carry the loss and grief, but weep in great gulping gasps into sleep’s pillow.
“Oh, Thaddeus, I am deeply sorry.”
She could feel his eyes on her and couldn’t bear to look up. His physical wounds were only a fraction of the internal ones. She knew. Yes, she knew.
“I don’t want your pity, Josie.”
Shivery, aching, she tugged his sleeves back into place and wished she’d never seen the horrifying scars.
Pity was not the emotion swirling in Josie’s chest.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation... I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Present
“HAYDEN?”
Someone called his name and he tried to focus.
“Earth to Hayden.”
Hayden blocked the imagines flashing like an old sixteen-millimeter movie in his head. Carrie’s puzzled face came into focus.
He blinked, rubbed at the pain pulsing in his temple. Something bizarre was happening to him, but he wasn’t ready to accept insanity.
It was only a dream. A dream that became strikingly true the second he’d stepped inside the two-hundred-year-old mill.
He’d dreamed portions of his books before.
But not like this.
“Sorry,” he said through lips gone dry as cornmeal. “My mind wandered.”
Carrie tweaked an eyebrow. “Plotting something devious?”
If she only knew.
“This is a great place for it.” Hands on his hips, he gazed around, pretending interest but really needing time to regain his composure. This uncanny familiarity had him shaken. “Want to check out what’s behind that door?”
“We have a book in the library with a story called The Lady or the Tiger.” She splayed her fingers on either side of her face in a pretend scream. “Opening a mystery door always reminds me of that book.”
“The original choose-your-own-ending story.” He remembered the tale of terrible decision and was grateful for the distraction. “A princess falls for an unworthy hero, and her father sends him into the arena to decide his fate. Behind one door is a tiger. Behind the other is a woman the king has chosen for him to marry but not the usually indulged princess. Either way, the princess loses her lover. So, does she choose, out of love, to let her lover marry another? Or does she, out of jealousy and loss, send him to his death by opening the tiger’s door?”
“Which do you think happened?”
Hayden shrugged. “He’s at the mercy of a disappointed woman. He gets eaten.”
“No way! The princess truly loves him. She’ll let him go to another rather than hurt him.”
Hayden scoffed. “I write thrillers, not romance. Death makes more sense and is undeniably more certain.”
“Cynic.” She put one hand on the closed door and looked over her shoulder at him, eyebrow lifted. “Tiger or lady? Will I be eaten?”
Testing the boards as he moved behind her, he said, “Be careful.”
She paused and in a spooky voice asked, “Because of the weak floors or the doom that awaits me behind that door?”
He smirked. “Your imagination is as active as mine.” Almost.
“I love books, too. Just because I don’t write them doesn’t mean I have no imagination.”
She pushed on the handle. As the tall door swung open, Hayden let out a loud growl and goosed her.
Her scream ripped the silence. She whirled on him, eyes wide and face pale. “Hayden Winters! I swear—”
He couldn’t hold back his laughter. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. I haven’t done that since I was a kid.”
“You will pay for this, buster. I mean it.” She shook a small fist at him, but she was laughing, too.
Pleasure bloomed. “You really are a scaredy-cat.”
“Card carrying.” She put a hand to her chest. “My heart is jumping out.”
Her chest heaved, and her breath came in short bursts. He had the overpowering desire to hold her and let her know he’d never really allow anything to hurt her.
This day was getting weirder by the minute.
His mind veered off track, off the mill, off the crazy dreams and onto her, his jumpy librarian with the big brown eyes.
“I wouldn’t let the tiger get you,” he murmured, aware that his voice had lowered and his pulse had picked up.
Her eyes flickered as if she, too, felt the mood change. He could see her sudden awareness, the caution, the uncertainty.
She licked her lips. “You wouldn’t?”
“You’re safe with me.” His throat felt full and hoarse, as if his heart was pushing up inside it. The symptom was unfamiliar, and he logged the feeling somewhere in the back of his brain. Fodder for a novel.
Carrie was not his type. She was too sweet. Too nice. Too good. And he was losing his grip.
Her lips, which looked as lush and enticing as any he’d ever seen, curved. “Defender against tigers and thunderstorms?”
His hands felt too big for his body, and he was suddenly a gangly adolescent, uncertain of what to say to a pretty girl.
Hayden Winters was rarely unsure with women, not out of arrogance but out of knowing exactly what they wanted from him and he from them.
But he didn’t know what he wanted from Carrie. Or if he did know, he dared not go there. Not in a million years.
If he let this moment drag out, he might do something foolish, like kiss her and start an affair right here and now. Foolish. Selfish. He didn’t know if Carrie was the affair kind, but one thing he did know. He did not want to hurt Carrie Riley.
And he was an expert at hurting people.
He cleared his throat, tamped down the mad rush of hormones and dragged his focus toward the now-opened room. “The coast is clear. Look out for the dust bunnies.”
His voice still sounded weird. He cleared his throat again, swallowing down the unwanted and unexpected desire coursing through him.
Relationships were sticky. He was here to plot and write a book.
If she felt the throb between them, she ignored it, a good reason for him to do the same.
She stepped inside the long divided space with doors at each end, and Hayden followed.
His heart still behaved weirdly.
“Don’t scare me again,” Carrie was saying, her finger pointed at his face. “There’s a window over there I can push you out of.”
“I’m beginning to wonder which of us plots thrillers,” he said.
She smirked and turned her attention to the room. “Someone else has been in here recently.”
“Good observation.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “No spiderwebs.”
“The junk has all been moved to one side.”
“Homeless?” A place like this would be well visited in the inner city or even deep in the poverty-stricken hollers of eastern Kentucky. Any shelter was better than none.
“I don’t know. Most likely kids camping out.”
The remark put him in mind of Brody. Had the kid been heading here the night of the storm?
Their shoes tapped on the hollow flooring. Dust motes rode in through the windows on shafts of sunlight. He went to the window, filthy with time and age, to gaze out at the peaceful creek. From the corner of one eye, he spotted the edge of the waterwheel.
“I wonder if a person were pushed from this window, if he would fall onto the wheel, onto the rocks or elsewhere.”
“We could do an experiment.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Are you volunteering to let me push you?”
She laughed, eyes flashing. “Toss something out the window besides me.”
He displayed his empty hands. “Got nothing else.”
“Let’s look in the other rooms. Maybe we’ll find something.” She shoved open the door to the left, stepped inside and disappeared.
* * *
“CARRIE!”
Hayden thrust himself toward the dark yawning doorway, heart in his throat.
She was there, on what was left of the collapsing floor, hands pressed against the broken boards as she tried to extract one foot and leg from a splintered hole.
“I’m okay,” she said, voice shaky. “The floor gave way.”
Without stopping to think of the danger of more collapse, he slid his hands beneath her arms and gently pulled.
“Easy now. Easy. Are you hurt?” He scooped her into his arms and carried her back into the bigger room and found that he was trembling, too.
“I don’t think so. A scrape maybe.”
Carefully, he settled them both on the floor, holding her, loath to let go. His chest thundered still.
“If the floor had given completely, you would have fallen through to the basement.” A full fifteen feet. He sickened to think of the damage a fall like could do, given the amount of junk and debris lying around. “You could have been injured, Carrie. Seriously injured.”
“Calamity Carrie.” She tried for a tremulous smile, self-deprecating as always. “I didn’t think before I leapt.”
“Could have been either of us.” In fact, he’d rather the accident had happened to him. “I shouldn’t have let you go in there.”
“You aren’t my boss, Mr. Winters,” she said softly, though her tone was sweet.
He only allowed people to get hurt in his books. She mattered.
Needing to regain his breath and calm his heart rate, he wrapped his arms around her and leaned his chin on top of her head.
She fit nicely against his shoulder. He cradled her there, comforted by her closeness.
“I scared you.” Her hand rubbed the small of his back in comforting circles.
Emotions stirred, powerful and disturbing. He longed for her comfort like a child longed for his mother’s love.
“Yes. And I don’t scare easily.” He pondered that, realized that Carrie got to him in ways he wasn’t used to. He felt this need to protect, all the while drawing comfort from her. Irony. Oxymoron. He could use that in a book. “Any place hurting? Any broken bones?”
“My leg burns a little. Probably only a scrape.”
“Let me see.” Reluctantly, he released her from his embrace. Holding Carrie was.
..nice. The editor in his head said the description wasn’t strong enough, but he was afraid to say more than nice.
With endearing modesty Hayden found sexy, she slowly tugged her skirt up to knee level, giving him full few of a shapely ankle and calf. He tried to stay detached, realizing he’d never have been a good doctor. Female skin was too intriguing.
“Right there.” She pointed to the side of her shinbone. A long, red, raw abrasion streaked four inches or more up her leg. “I’m okay, though, Hayden. Really. Stop fretting.”
“Looks like a broken board got you, but I don’t see any splinters left behind.” He carefully, purposely, tugged her skirt down to her feet, but let his fingers linger on her smooth curvy ankle. “You’ve lost your bracelet.”
“Oh.” She leaned forward, bumping the top of her head with his. “Darn.”
He looked up from her smooth, curvy ankle, lamenting the broken ankle bracelet as much for him as for her. Her eyes met his, and a shiver of need moved through him.
Carrie was a dangerous woman. She made him wish for things he’d long ago put on a shelf.
“Was the bracelet special?”
“Only to me. Don’t worry about it.”
“I liked it.”
“You did?”
He touched her cheek, which proved every bit as soft and smooth as her ankle.
“I noticed it the first night we met,” he said softly, reminiscing about the moment he’d laid eyes on her and the tingly sensation she and her pajamas and her ankle bracelet had aroused. “Unintentionally sexy. The most appealing kind.”
Beneath his fingertips, her skin warmed in a blush. She tipped her head to one side so that he cupped her face.
Again Hayden considered kissing her, taking this interest to the next level, but when he looked into enormous brown eyes so full of warmth toward a man she couldn’t begin to understand, a man he could never let her know, he retreated to his carefully erected lie, the facade that was Hayden Winters.
He dropped his hand and backed away from her tempting personal space. “I’ll see if I can find it.”
“Don’t you dare go back in there. The floor is too unstable.”
Hayden was already up and heading that way. The distance was what he needed to clear his head, though he held out little hope. His head had been anything but clear since coming to Honey Ridge, Tennessee.
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